


Now We're Cooking with Gas

by Beltenebra



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis, 食戟のソーマ | Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma
Genre: Bad Cooking, Companionable Snark, Cooking Lessons, Cousins, Gen, Inui juice, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-19 00:50:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11302317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beltenebra/pseuds/Beltenebra
Summary: Inui really wants to cook a meal for someone that they might actually enjoy - or at least not actively flee from. Lucky for him one of his cousins is a world-class Japanese chef and there's a family reunion coming up.





	Now We're Cooking with Gas

**Author's Note:**

> For SASO 2017 - For the prompt "The AU in which Hinako patiently (but increasingly desperately) attempts to teach her young cousin how to cook something, anything, that isn't a possibly-caustic sports drink."

“Hinata-san, I have a favor to ask you.” 

Hinata lowered her beer and blinked down at the spikey top of her cousin’s head, bowed nearly down to the wooden boards of the ryokan porch. 

“Sadaharu-kun, it’s been so long. You must have finished middle school by now, yes?”

He straightened up and nudged his glasses back up his nose. 

“I’m a first year at Toudai this year, Hinata-san.” 

“My the years just fly by don’t they?” She was definitely going to need more beer. Maybe something harder. It had been a long time since she could free up her schedule to attend the annual summer family reunion. She wouldn’t have bothered this year either except her mother had resorted to dire threats: contacting her Totsuki Academy colleagues to complain directly, releasing her baby pictures to the press, that sort of thing. In the end it was easier to take a three day weekend and head to the mountains. At least there were hot springs. 

“Your mother told me you’re studying chemistry, right? What kind of favor do you need from me?” 

Sadaharu’s serious expression took on an edge of impossible earnestness. ’Was I ever that young,’ she thought. 

“Next spring I’ll be sharing an apartment with my partner, my tennis partner-” 

“Mmhmm.” She vaguely remembered tennis, his team had been quite good? There was probably something about it in the New Year’s family card. 

“And I want to be able to cook him something.” His lips turned down just a little at the corners, embarrassed maybe? “It doesn’t have to be gourmet or anything. Just... something someone would like to eat.” 

Hinata could feel her expression soften. Whoever partner-san was her cousin seemed to have it bad. As much as she loathed the idea of an ameture cooking lesson she couldn’t turn down his request. Surely she could teach him something simple and fool-proof. 

Two hours later, having successfully charmed the ryokan cooks into ceding a corner of their kitchen and some ingredients to her Hinata _really_ needed that drink. 

They were making nikujaga, a straightforward simmered beef and vegetable dish. She could make this with her eyes closed and one hand tied behind her back. As a matter of fact, a hazy memory of a late-night, sake-hazed shokugeki told her that she had totally done that in her third year. 

Theoretically it should not be difficult at all. She would give a simple direction like ‘cube the potatoes like this and add them to the pot’. But Sadaharu would respond with something baffling like ‘and then we add two hundred grams of bee pollen for added immunity boost?’ 

“No,” she responded in her sweetest tone. “that would make it disgusting.” 

“But what about vitamins,” Sadaharu asked, bewildered.

“There are vitamins in vegetables, you know.” 

“Yes, but-”

“Let’s move on to the carrots, vitamin A! See? Plenty of vitamins. Now, the carrots don’t need as much time to cook as potatoes so we add them later. It’s important that all of the vegetables in the stew be optimally cooked and finish at the same time.” She tried not to pause too much to discourage her cousin from interjecting another maddening question. “Let’s move on to seasoning!” 

Her cousin scribbled page after page of notes as she introduced the basic seasonings they would use: soy sauce, mirin, and sugar. Even her most keen apprentices hadn’t been so thorough. She was sure he was writing more than she was saying so she couldn’t imagine what was going into the notebook. 

“Now the traditional recipe is just that simple but I always like to add a little surprising twist to a dish to make it my own.” 

“Ah,” Sadaharu muttered, “a secret technique.” 

“...Something like that I suppose. I always use a touch of black vinegar in my stew just towards the end of cooking. It boosts the sweetness of the mirin and sugar and gives the broth a piquant edge.”

“Vinegar is very healthy, I often use it myself,” her cousin nodded sagely. “So for this much stew we’ll use about five hundred milligrams of vinegar?” 

“What?!” Every head in the kitchen whipped around. She hadn’t meant to shriek quite that loudly. Hinata took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and counted her ten favorite alliums in her head. “Not quite,” she continued, considerably calmer (sounding at least). “I would use maybe twenty or thirty milligrams here. Any more and the vinegar would completely overwhelm all of the other flavors.” 

Sadaharu made a sound of enlightenment and muttered something about ‘Hyper Deluxe Juice’ and ‘finally makes sense’. She did not ask for details. 

Eventually they had a fairly tasty nikujaga. Not her finest work but considering the circumstances she would take what she could get. Her cousin seemed very appreciative, practically inhaling two bowls before looking down at his incomprehensible notes with a heavy sigh. 

“What’s wrong, Sadaharu-kun?” She repressed a wince as she continued, “...do you have any more questions?” 

“No, Hinata-san. Your instruction has been impeccable. I’m just afraid that even with the most detailed notation that I won’t be able to make something delicious like this.” 

“Oh, Sadaharu-kun,” she said patting him companionably on the shoulder, taking a swig from the cold bottle the head chef had wisely fetched her, “if this person really likes you, they’ll be truly happy with the effort that you go to when you cook for them.” 

Her cousin looked sceptical but she pressed on. “No, really. Most people aren’t so concerned with the highest peaks of perfect flavor, they will be happy with the feelings that come through in your cooking.” 

Sadaharu’s expression didn’t change very much but he seemed much more at ease. Her work here was done. She absolutely deserved to take the rest of this bottle of sake and hide, er, relax in the onsen. She patted him on the shoulder again, more firmly this time and put on her best super stern chef voice of authority. “Just stay away from the bee pollen.”


End file.
